2019: APC stalwart wants consensus ‘primaries’ in Abia

Paul Ikonne, All Progressives Congress chieftain in Abia, has said that a consensus candidate will guarantee the party’s victory in the state in the 2019 general elections. He stated this on Tuesday in Abuja while speaking with newsmen at APC National Secretariat after picking the party’s Expression of Interest and Nomination forms to contest Abia governorship in 2019. Ikonne said that as long as the party came together with a consensus candidate which member would eventually go for, “we will come out strong”. The aspirant is a founding member of the APC in Abia and the governorship candidate of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria in 2011 election. He assured that if given the opportunity as the party’s candidate, he would make Abia conducive for business if he won the election, noting that people of the state were business-oriented. Ikonne added that he would also take the state to a high level and make it the envy of other states of the federation. He, however, said that those plotting to destabilise the APC in Abia, would themselves be destabilised. On the adoption of indirect primaries to pick the party’s candidates for elections as was being canvassed by some politicians, he said that it depended on the peculiarities of states. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the APC national leadership had adopted the direct primaries to pick its candidates for the 2019 general elections. He said: “The party national leadership is very wise, but there are peculiarities. In Abia, for example, indirect primaries and consensus will definitely give us what we want. “Stakeholders are yet to meet; we are still going to meet, and by the time we meet, we will come out with a blueprint on the way forward.” He assured that if given the APC ticket and elected as next governor of Abia, he would bring new ideas that would transform the state, adding that he would bring value to its governance. Ikonne said: “I have been in the party and I have worked for it and am still working for it.” “During the 2015 general elections, I organised the presidential rally in Abia which was successful and adjudged the best.”